La Vaughn Belle

La Vaughn Belle (born 1974) is an artist from the United States Virgin Islands who uses a variety of media including drawings, paintings, woodwork, ceramics, photography, and video. She is best known for co-creating with Jeannette Ehlers the 23-foot tall statue “I Am Queen Mary,” the first public statue of a black woman in Denmark, featuring labor leader Mary Thomas. Her mother is from Tobago and her father is from Barbados. She attended Columbia University in New York, and in her junior year she took a painting class and decided to become an artist. However, she had already switched her major from Pre-Med to English, and couldn't switch majors again. After receiving her bachelor's degree, she started teaching and moved back to St. Croix. She received an MFA at el Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba in 2005. The 23-foot statue depicts Mary Thomas, who helped lead the 1878 "Fireburn" labor riot in St. Croix where workers in the Danish West Indies staged a protest. She sits on a peacock chair, recalling “the iconic 1967 photograph of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party” and the plinth incorporates “coral cut from the ocean by enslaved Africans gathered from ruins of the foundations of historic buildings on St. Croix.” In one hand she holds a torch, and the other holds a West Indian cane bill (a tool for cutting sugarcane cutting), which the artists state symbolizes the “resistance strategies” of the enslaved people who toiled in Danish colonies.